Twitter. Some people get it, some people don’t. I highly recommend that you “get it”. Your personal / professional reputation may be resting on it.
First case-in-point: Omni Hotels recently scored some MAJOR good juju by paying attention on Twitter and solving an issue regarding sub-par wi-fi service in a ballroom in their Jacksonville property within a half-hour of a speaker tweeting about it. Read all about it at Hotel Check-In on USAToday.com. Coolest part of this story? Omni has actual STAFF people responsible for monitoring Twitter. You’ll note that neither tweet was specifically directed to Omni – they just picked up on the fact that they were mentioned in a tweet and took care of the issue. Seriously cool.
Second case-in-point: Marriott International responded on Twitter faster than they did by phone. So, this one’s a little less fantastic, since the story starts out by saying that the customer actually called the front desk a number of times without any response to their need (a burnt-out light bulb in their condo). All the same, how cool is it that you can tweet about it to Marriott Corporate, and get an almost immediate response and resolution?
Third case-in-point: Delta Air Lines LOSES major points here. They have not one but TWO Twitter accounts, and apparently they don’t monitor either account. At the bottom of the Omni article on Hotel Check-In, Peter Shankman recalls sending direct tweets to Delta’s two accounts without receiving a single response. He eventually found a very helpful agent, and tweeted about his good experience with her, but c’mon Delta! Don’t open a Twitter account and then abandon it! Bad, BAD Delta.
Oh, and just for the record, I’m still working on “getting it”.
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